Carolyn Steel recently gave a presentation at TED Global 2009 in Oxford, UK last July.

Architect and author Carolyn Steel uses food as a medium to “read” cities and understand how they work. In her book Hungry City she traces — and puts into historical context — food’s journey from land to urban table and thence to sewer. Cities, like people, are what they eat.

The video was recently posted and Carolyn gives a great presentation and some great insights.

Toronto City Council has overwhelmingly approved Waterfront Toronto’s recommendation to transform Queens Quay into a grand lakefront boulevard by replacing two lanes of traffic on the south side of the street with a beautiful linear park.

Transforming Queens Quay by creating open public space along the south side of the street with a generous new pedestrian promenade and expanded Martin Goodman Trail is part of the winning design for revitalizing the central waterfront by West 8 + DTAH.

UNStudio has won the limited competition for a 40,000 spectator football stadium for the most successful club in the Chinese Super League: Dalian Shide FC. The stadium will be built in the club’s hometown of the city of Dalian, on the southern tip of Liaodong peninsula in Northeast China.

The design for the 38,500 m2 stadium has been inspired by the colourful layering and overlapping of the ancient Chinese cuju football. The design weaves together the collective spirit of the spectators with the public realm and the urban context of the building. The main stadium houses spectator seating, TV broadcasting centre, administration areas, VIP lounge, players facilities and public concourse in a layered envelope which extends on ground level to provide outdoor public areas above decked parking facilities. In addition, the design incorporates two training fields on the 144,000 m2 site.

“With the Canada Line coming, it was not business as usual. We knew that,” says Terry Crowe, the manager of policy planning in the suburb of Richmond south of Vancouver, which launched an aggressive initiative five years ago to redesign its city around the five transit stations in preparation for new development.

Mayor Byron W. Brown says the city will retake control of all its parks and recreational centers at the end of this year. His move will end an arrangement with Erie County government that began in 2004, when the county — in a step toward regional government that was supposed to save taxpayers money — agreed to take over the maintenance of all city parks.